Friday, March 21, 2014

FRENCH PARENTS OF MUSLIM CONVERTS DISSATISFIED WITH EFFORTS TO CURB JIHADISM

When Dominique Bons' timid son stopped smoking overnight and started praying frequently at his home in the southern French city of Toulouse, she alerted the authorities.

They did nothing because Nicolas was not suspected of any crime. One day last year he disappeared. Then Bons was sent a text message saying the 30-year-old had been "martyred" on December 22 driving a truck bomb in the Syrian city of Homs.

He grew up in a middle class suburb to atheist parents but converted to Islam in 2009. Like his younger half-brother who died in Syria months earlier, he joined the al Qaeda splinter group, Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

They are among a growing number of people, an estimated 2,000 so far, who have left Europeans states to fight alongside Islamist rebels in Syria to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad. Europe's authorities are struggling to stem the flow.

Bons is angry that her efforts to alert the government to a potential problem were ignored and is also convinced that the strategy of France and other European countries of jailing those caught trying to get to Syria makes the situation worse.

"It's crazy," said Bons, a retired military secretary who has set up a support group for parents of children who have been radicalized. "In jail they will be reinforced in their desire to go back to Syria... It seems like they (the government) are doing whatever they can to ensure that this continues."

I think converts to Islam - and people born under the Religion of Peace, for that matter - should be sent to see psychologists. And parents have to do more to prevent their children from falling in with the wrong crowd.